I have an idea..

I really like the idea of howtoforge and if it wasn't for a bit of writers block, I'd contribute more. This idea I have is kind of related to the idea of howtoforge, but on a broader scale.

I ran across the site '43things.com' today and thought it was a decent idea. The only bad thing about it, I think, is the lack of community support. For instance, take Learn PHP for example, the comments are just full of stuff like "I learned it" or "It's worth learning". Nothing to actually help the 298 people learn PHP.

So my idea is to create something where people could "enlist" in certain things they want to learn. That person, and other people, could add different resources, tips, books, webpages, whatever, that would help teach that topic.

I browse these forums once a week or so here and always see different topics where this could be useful. Take for instance the thread on SpamAssassin Rules. Someone could create that lesson and others could post different links and resources on how to write your own spamassassin rules.

I really like the idea of howtoforge and if it wasn't for a bit of writers block, I'd contribute more.

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Yes, you're right there. We've just changed this therefore, which means you only have to register under http://www.howtoforge.com/user/register, and as soon as you're registered you can start posting your own howtos without having to write an email to the HowtoForge team.

So my idea is to create something where people could "enlist" in certain things they want to learn. That person, and other people, could add different resources, tips, books, webpages, whatever, that would help teach that topic.

I browse these forums once a week or so here and always see different topics where this could be useful. Take for instance the thread on SpamAssassin Rules. Someone could create that lesson and others could post different links and resources on how to write your own spamassassin rules.

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There's the "Suggest HOWTO" forum where people can ask for special tutorials they would like to see. Is this what you mean or does your idea go beyond that?

Lets say I want to learn PHP. You can't really write a howto on How to Learn PHP since PHP covers so many different things. A howto would be more like How to Validate Forms with PHP.

So for people who are absolutely new to PHP, they could look add themselves under the "I want to learn PHP" category. Inside the category, people could post links, books, ideas, etc on learning PHP.

If this were to become a database driven application, you could add a bunch of extra features to this like 'I graduated the PHP category' and 'I see you're learning PHP, you might also like to learn about Apache'. Stuff like that.